1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a compressor or turbine wheel for a turbine engine such as an airplane turboprop or turbojet, the wheel including inter-blade sealing means.
2. Description of the Related Art
A compressor or turbine wheel of a turbine engine comprises a disk that includes slots in its periphery for engaging blade roots, these roots being connected to the airfoils of the blades via platforms that are generally of parallelepiped shape and that, when in the mounted position on the disk, are spaced apart from one another by small amounts of clearance in the circumferential direction.
A fraction of the flow of air for ventilating the blades penetrates into the spaces situated between the roots of the blades and it needs to be prevented from passing through the above-mentioned clearance between the platforms of the blades radially from the inside towards the outside by means of inter-blade sealing systems mounted between the platforms or the roots of the blades.
In the prior art, each inter-blade sealing system comprises a sheet metal box that is held captive radially on the inside of the platforms of two adjacent blades, between the tangs of the blades.
The major drawback of that sealing system is that it does not enable the platforms of the blades to be cooled (so cracks might appear thereon) and therefore serves merely to provide inter-blade sealing and possibly also to damp any vibration to which the blades are subjected in operation. Furthermore, that system does not allow blades to be mounted on the disk and removed from the disk independently of one another.
Proposals have already been made to mount an insert of triangular section between the side edges of the platforms of two adjacent blades.
Nevertheless, that solution is not entirely satisfactory since the insert can become worn in operation, and its wear is not uniform since it has three different bearing faces that may be subjected to wear. Furthermore, the wear is not quantifiable, e.g. during a maintenance operation.